Home from Haiti, reporter reflects on destruction, rebuilding

Port-au-Prince is basically broken,' Derwood woman says

A Haitian patient reaches for help at a makeshift hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, run by Catholic Relief Services of Baltimore. The organization worked with St. Francois de Sales Hospital before the collapse.

In the last episode of Ken Burns' panoramic documentary The Civil War, the viewer learns that in 1866, one-fifth of Mississippi's budget was spent on artificial limbs.

I thought about that statistic often while I was on board the USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship staffed largely by personnel from Bethesda's National Naval Medical Center, and in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from Jan. 15-Jan. 27. What part of its budget would Haiti have to spend to make its wounded people whole after the devastating earthquake struck the country Jan. 12? Will Haiti have a budget? By the time the children who lost arms and legs are old enough to have their own children, will there be a Haiti at all?

The most important source for answers may come from the troubled Haitian political sphere, according to Pat Labuda, a Derwood resident and executive director of Health and Education for Haiti, which collaborates with Haitians to provide better medical treatment and educational opportunities in their country. She thinks aid from the U.S. and others should come without strings or schemes to manipulate Haiti.

"The Haitian people are very resourceful, very talented and very capable, if they have the opportunity to truly elect someone who represents the people," Labuda said.

The first time I ventured into Port-au-Prince, I saw what politics could not prevent when I viewed the city through a van's rear window. It is disturbing to admit, but I was surprised by the number of the buildings still standing, crooked and crazy-legged as they may have been. What is disturbing, however, is the realization that so many structures that remain upright are ruined anyway, since people are often unwilling to venture and stay within them.

A question I was asked by people at some distance from the situation in Haiti was, "Is it as bad as it looks on TV?" The accurate and humane answer was, "It's worse than that." But the worst things were those that escaped television cameras and microphones and reporters' notepads. Like the fate of those spectral buildings doomed to fall; like the thousands of bodies buried beneath the rubble; like the smell of the people, both the living and the dead, who were decaying.

Other moments managed to wind together tragedy and comedy, spawning drama in unexpected situations.

One morning at Port-au-Prince's Terminal Varreux, where the U.S. Navy had set up a medical evacuation station, a group of us watched incredulously as a helicopter began to descend on the wrong side of the terminal's chain link fence. On that unfortunate side of the fence a group of (unhurt) Haitian men had been leaning on that fence, imploring the Navy security forces for food and beckoning them over. I saw those men staring dumbfounded at the misguided helicopter. Their thoughts were naked before us: "Will we be saved? Are they coming to help us? Can this be true?"

The violent gesticulations of medical and security personnel dispelled those thoughts. The helicopter lurched to the correct side of the fence. Everyone was laughing in disbelief, except for those Haitian men, who I imagine could believe or disbelieve whatever they chose for all the good it did them. The biggest decision they could make, whether to stay in Port-au-Prince or leave for small country towns unprepared for the rising tide of disaster-ridden refugees, seemed too ugly to contemplate.

"Port-au-Prince is basically broken, and so the other areas that are not need to be strengthened long term," Labuda said.

In the end, this may have been why the Haitian men seemed to make no decision at all. They hung on the wrong side of a fence, watched Americans work, and wondered when their help would come.

As I observed Americans working on board the Comfort and elsewhere, I heard how they had trained their entire careers in the U.S. Navy to deal with medical catastrophes. But doctors who never see tetanus in the U.S. saw three such cases within the first week of the Comfort's arrival in Haiti. There was a case of cerebral malaria, of a boy whose leaking cerebrospinal fluid had led to mold on his brain, and of a man who needed three limbs amputated. I saw one boy who looked as if his left eye had been neatly plucked from its socket.

How do those Americans deal with the nightmares I saw from a relatively safe distance?

One answer, I think, is that they pretend things are normal to such an extent that things eventually do become normal to them. Procedure is not just something to be followed. It is first a refuge, then a home.

There were no spontaneous displays of grief or emotion. They gossiped about their boyfriends, husbands and children during lunch. They scribbled things like "Bulldog" on big pieces of tape and slapped them on each other's backs as if they were the newest members of a football team. They posed for group photos near wounded children. They worked out in the ship's gym. What choice did they have? The tragedy is public, but their grief must be private.

It was a humbling experience in the best and worst possible ways to have witnessed such tragedy and grief, as well as the great good that was and is still being done. Lives may be gone and limbs may end up being artificial. But what I think about is, can the people rise? And who will help them walk?